Abstract
This paper looks at consumer education within Taiwan’s compulsory education system, analyzing textbook content from the perspectives of (1) Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and (2) compulsory education itself. It analyzes a total of 100 volumes published by two companies in three Taiwanese school subjects in the compulsory curriculum that are defined as addressing consumer education.
The research revealed that Taiwanese students were aware of being “global citizens” attempting to create “sustainable societies” from a relatively early age (the third grade of elementary school). However, there were issues with some of the most basic consumer education topics; namely, consumer rights and responsibilities, decision-making, and critical thinking. Heavy biases were also discovered in the descriptive content depending on the textbook publisher.
